Why Brawn GP Is Fast

Looking at the recent off-season F1 test times the order seems more jumbled than usual. The former Honda F1 team is now Brawn Grand Prix, having been taken over by former team principal Ross Brawn.

While certainly a new team would perhaps run low fuel loads and remove ballast to impress potential sponsors, delving deeper into why the Brawn is fast reveals there are a fair amount of legitimate reasons.

First, Ross Brawn is THE MAN in the paddock having partnered Michael Schumacher to all 7 of his World Championship titles at Benetton and Ferrari.

Next, rather than develop the 2008 car which was terrible to begin with, Brawn chose to begin work very early on the current car. So it's had a lot of time on the "drawing board" relative to those from the other teams.

Thirdly, while the Honda F1 car wasn't good, Honda spent more than any other team last year. The facilities the Brawn team now have are right up there with the top teams.

And remember they're now powered by Mercedes who've won about 1/3 of the F1 races this decade. I'd also guess the Brawn workforce are quite motivated not only by all the factors above but very simply by the fact they are employed following months of rumors of layoffs and the former Honda team having to shut down.

Finally, the two drivers are both grand prix winners - known quantities who are fast, reliable, and experienced in set up and development, especially beneficial in a year of even more testing restrictions.

This season is shaping up to be a great competition. Perhaps in the early races one team will dominate but the others will inevitably catch up. It looks like BMW and Ferrari are strongest at this point. A wild card or two could be Brawn and Red Bull. Fernando Alonso may also flatter the Renault on occasion. McLaren are a big question mark at this point.

We'll see in a few weeks what happens at the Melbourne season opener.

F1: Brazilian Grand Prix

The start of the race was delayed by 10 minutes due to a brief downpour. The extra time was used to allow the teams to change to rain tires. The start was clean, at least at the front of the field. None of the first several positions changed as everyone duly made it around turn one without drama.

Further back Nico Rosberg hit David Coulthard (in his final F1 race) and causing him to spin. He was then collected by Kaz Nakajima and his race was over. Nelson Piquet also spun out and retired.

Rosberg was later one of the first (if not the first) driver to come in for dry tires as the rain abated and the track dried out. Shortly after everyone else came in for dry tires as well.

Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) emerged in 7th place having run 4th prior to that. Felipe Massa had led from the start in his Ferrari.

Some interesting stats mentioned by the broadcast team on SpeedTV included McLaren supposedly spending $7.5m in development in the last few weeks to improve their car by 0.15 seconds per lap (a lap of Interlagos?), and that the car is about 2.5 seconds per lap faster now than it was at the first race of the season. Impressive.

However, this brings up the point that F1 racing is also ridiculously expensive. $7.5m is plenty of money to do an entire season of racing in many, many other series. This is the dilemma faced by the F1 teams.

Teams will use whatever resources available to them. As the sport is currently structured, no matter what they do, whoever has the most money is likely going to be able to develop the fastest car. It’s an arms race and any rule change aiming to reduce costs is unlikely going to result in the intended outcome.

Anyway, back to the racing. Sebastian Vettel (Toro Rosso) was in fine form running a strong second for a long time, with Fernando Alonso (Renault) third. Robert Kubica has been hot and cold in his BMW in the last few races, the pace of development of Ferrari and McLaren clearly increasing relative to BMW.

Near the end he was lapped by Hamilton but managed to stay with him after. Much had to do with their relative fuel loads and tire compounds/condition, but it was noticeable.

With about 10 laps to go Massa was clear out front followed by Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari), Timo Glock (Toyota), and Hamilton. As they ran, Hamilton would win the world championship.

Hamilton was clearly driving conservatively or struggling with the set up (see qualifying post on parc ferme and set up). Then it started to rain again. Vettel caught up to Hamilton. With about two laps to go, Kubica unlapped himself by passing Hamilton, and Vettel used that opportunity to go by as well.

That pushed Hamilton back to 6th place meaning Massa would win the championship if it stayed that way. Vettel appeared to be pulling away. Then just two corners from the finish line on the last lap Timo Glock, who had (bravely) stayed out on dry tires, faltered slightly and Hamilton passed him for 5th position and thus regaining the title.

Massa did everything he needed to do the whole weekend, but such was Hamilton’s points lead coming into the event that he was not able to overcome it.

The final outcome for the season was good for the sport, the last race will surely go down in history as one of the most memorable races ever (Hollywood couldn’t write it better), and hopefully F1 has started to make amends for its shenanigans of the past 2 seasons.

McLaren showed incredible reliability (Hamilton’s car anyway) and Ferrari took the Constructor’s title. What a season it’s been.

F1: Brazilian GP Qualifying

The weather was perfect, though the prediction for race day is that it will rain. This again highlights the need to change parc ferme rules which require wing settings to be fixed before qualifying.

Every team has to decide what configuration to run the cars in qualifying and the race. But if ambient conditions change it becomes a lottery, which can greatly affect the quality of the racing for the worse.

This will be David Coulthard’s final grand prix as a driver. There is a new helmet mounted camera to give the TV audience footage from the driver’s view. It’s pretty neat but the view is quite limited and it depends on where the driver looks, which is often not where the car is pointed. And there’s a lot of bobbing around. The car mounted cameras are much more TV-friendly.

In Q1 the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen topped the time sheets. Lewis Hamilton was third in his McLaren – not clear who’s running how much wing and fuel.

Q2 was quite spectacular with the top ten drivers separated by just 0.339 seconds. Heikki Kovalainen was first in his McLaren followed by Sebastian Vettel in a Toro Rosso. Robert Kubica did not make it past Q2 having struggled with his BMW.

Q3 was all Massa as he posted the fastest time. When all the major players began their final laps, Massa was out front and timed it just right to be able to get 2 laps on the rest of the pack after the clock ran out. He ended up improving his time further to take pole, followed by Jarno Trulli (Toyota), Raikkonen, Hamilton, Kovalainen, Fernando Alonso (Renault), and Vettel.

Massa, always fast at Interlagos, really needs to win and have Hamilton finish lower than 5th in order to take the driver’s championship. Ferrari looks likely to take the constructor’s title, but the driver’s title at this point depends strongly on how clean of a start we get.

Tomorrow’s race is looking mighty exciting. I won’t be able to catch it until Wednesday but will be eager to take notes about it.

F1: Chinese Grand Prix

It was a good, clean start. Fernando Alonso gets by Heikki Kovalainen for fourth place. Jarno Trulli and Sebastian Bourdais collide. Lewis Hamilton sets the pace, followed by the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

I don’t understand why the broadcast team at Speed TV thinks Felipe Massa getting second place to Hamilton’s first would put him in a strong position for the Brazil Grand Prix, the next and final race. Finishing like that he’d be 7 points behind Hamilton.

Ferrari look very strong for the Constructor’s title but the Driver’s title is a whole different matter.

Based on initial pace it looked like Hamilton was light on fuel and Massa not as much. It turns out it was in fact the other way around, which favored Hamilton.

Kovalainen’s right front tire fails and he has to limp it back to the pits. The crew put on a new set and off he goes. He’s on a heavier fuel load than teammate Hamilton but has not been able to keep up.

After the second round of stops Raikkonen (on soft tires) is seen checking his mirrors for Massa (on hard tires). He will in all likelihood let Massa by since he is out of contention for the Driver’s title and Massa is not.

It’s also a possibility that Raikkonen has not pushed Hamilton harder due to having to maintain station to Massa in order to orchestrate a ‘pass’ since team orders are technically not allowed. Ferrari might have chosen to do this in order to maximize team points and limit damage to Massa’s title chances.

With eight laps to go Massa goes by Raikkonen, having steadily gained on him over the preceding 10 laps or so. In the end Kovalainen parks his McLaren Hamilton wins, followed by Massa, Raikkonen, Alonso (Renault), and the BMWs of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica. The Renault has improved tremendously over the course of the season.

Kubica is now out of contention for the Driver’s title, Hamilton leads by 7 points over Massa, and Ferrari leading the Constructor’s title by 11 points with one race remaining.

F1: Chinese GP Qualifying

Robert Kubica barely made it from Q1 to Q2. With 5 minutes to go he was 17th, the car was in the garage and his mechanics were swarming all over it. Out he went and did the lap he needed.

The McLarens were 1-2, led by Lewis Hamilton. The Ferrari duo were 5th and 6th or thereabouts. David Coulthard was irate with Nick Heidfeld for passing him prior to the start of DC's flying lap, and then coming in. Heidfeld was later demoted 3 starting positions, and rightfully so. But come on DC. Calling it the most unsportsman move ever is just a slight exaggeration.

In Q2 Kimi Raikkonnen went out early on soft tires. My guess is this was to obtain data for the team and title-contender Felipe Massa. Normally they save those tires til the end of the session or for Q3. Kubica was on the bubble near the end and was not able to move into the top 10 as hard as he tried. Teammate Heidfeld did.

In Q3 Hamilton took pole, Raikkonen was second, Massa 3rd, and Fernando Alonso a strong 4th in his Renault.

F1: Japanese Grand Prix

Qualifying

This was a snoozefest. Not because it wasn’t interesting to watch but watching it live in the E.S.T. time zone was around 1:00 AM so I was dozing off intermittently after a long day.

The first few thing of note was that the green grooves on the tires are a gimmick. Sure it’s part of a larger Bridgestone corporate message about sustainability, but all so transparent. Nothing has changed from the previous races this year as far as F1’s impact on the environment.

The change makes it hard to tell which compound each car is running since ALL the tires have green grooves and the softer tire has a white groove as well, where as the previous convention was that only the softer tire had white grooves while the other tires did not have any color grooves. Plus next year they’ll go back to slick tires.

On a more serious note about tires, since there is no “tire war” because Bridgestone is the only supplier, why do they have to bring custom compounds to each race? It makes the racing less predictable because each team’s performance can be compromised based on the chance that Bridgestone choose specifications that don’t suit their cars, which does nothing to reduce operating expenses.

They should make two compounds of a fixed specification for the entire season and bring that to every event. That way the teams will have a clear and equal starting point from which to design their cars, instead of having to do more and more simulation and testing just to pick which tires to use for each race weekend. Sure, the tires would likely not offer quite as much peak performance but the racing would be closer and that should be the top priority.

Other rules in F1 that should be dropped include the requirement that wing settings from qualifying be subject to “parc ferme” restrictions. It is foolish to compromise race day performance by having to choose the car’s wing settings the day before. Whenever weather conditions change, suddenly the car’s performance will be compromised purely from chance. As long as the teams don’t replace the wings with different components, there should be no problem with wing settings being changed on the grid prior to the race.

Again, qualifying was uneventful. Lewis Hamilton took pole, Kimi Raikkonen was second, followed by Heikki Kovalainen, Fernando Alonso, and Felipe Massa. Massa didn’t deliver when it mattered in this title fight.

Race

At the beginning of the show, Speed TV talks with McLaren about their wheel nuts which are not hexagonal. They adopted a design from Indy car which has many more angles and allows the gun to always fit the nut without any axial alignment by the operator. That probably saves a tenth or two during each pitstop (not to mention reducing risk of error).

Race day temperature was cool at 16 C, we’ll see how that affects tire performance from various teams. The start of the race was chaotic. Raikkonen and Kovalainen made great starts and got by Hamilton, but Hamilton elbowed his way past his teammate and had the inside line to Raikkonen at the first turn.

Hamilton played Kamikaze and overcooked his entry and that forced Raikkonen wide. Both McLaren and Ferrari drivers then went off the track and Alonso was able to take the lead followed by Robert Kubica.

Kubica is the most complete driver on the grid this year. His interview responses indicate he thinks quite methodically and was flexible to track conditions. When Peter Windsor asked him before the race how they’re dealing adapting to the track and tire combination, he indicated how he looked after the tires on different laps (i.e. different driving lines), opened up the differential, and change his steering angles. In other words, he changes the settings and way he drives on different laps to get the best out of the car.

All the drivers do this to varying degrees, but the way that he responds to these questions so naturally suggests that he has tremendous mental capacity to do so under peak pressure and is also a great test driver. More on this later.

David Coulthard and Kazuki Nakajima go off the track and break their cars; Coulthard’s car is done while Nakajima continues back to the pits for a new nosecone. It appeared Coulthard’s right rear suspension was wobbling (broken) all over prior to his impact with the tire wall. The Red Bull car does seem quite flimsy, breaking not for the first time this year, though it’s uncertain what caused the break.

Then Massa and Hamilton make contact and Hamilton spins and has to wait til everyone goes by. It looked to me that Massa was at fault as Hamilton was ahead and had the line.

Adrian Sutil is out on the main straight with a flat tire and parks it but not before leaving debris all over the track. Kovalainen’s engine blows. Then Massa is given a drive through penalty for hitting Hamilton, and Hamilton is given one for his move on Raikkonen at the start. One has to wonder if a drive through penalty at Fuji is much harsher than other circuits because the front straight is so long.

Sebastian Bourdais then leads a grand prix for the first time in his career. Then he pits and comes out while Massa is going by and they make light contact. Massa spins and continues. Raikkonen chases down Kubica and the two have an intense scrap for several laps before Raikkonen’s tires start going away.

Massa is under investigation for the Bourdais incident. It will be investigated after the race. F1 just shot itself in the foot again. When there is ample time to make a decision during the race, the stewards should settle the matter immediately in order to avoid possible penalties being imposed later and changing the results after the fact, as well as raising questions of manipulation of the championship outcome.

Another thing is the debris left from Sutil’s incident should’ve been cleared off. It was left there for the duration of the race and a bunch of drivers ran over bits and pieces while attempting to overtake.

Amazingly Alonso won his second race in a row. Kubica was second and Raikkonen brought it home third. Massa managed to salvage a point while Hamilton scored none in a very eventful race. Neither drove like championship contenders in this race.

Hamilton is a very good driver but he is also super lucky considering the mistakes he has made. He has had virtually no mechanical failures in his entire time in F1.

Having had a very lackluster season and now out of contention for the title, Raikkonen’s body language on the podium says he’s done. The Iceman’s fire appears to be out.

Meanwhile Alonso appears to be on fire even though he too is out of the title chase. When he finally gets a seat at Ferrari there will be epic battles with Hamilton and McLaren.

Ultimately, if there’s one driver who has performed like a champion this year it’s Kubica. He’s fast, intelligent, level-headed, and has made the fewest mistakes – if not diplomatic (easy on publicly criticizing the team Robert).

F1: Singapore Grand Prix

Good start to the race, fairly clean. Most drivers were using the harder tires. Kimi Raikkonen started setting fast laps within the first 10 laps which was sooner than has been usual.

The race was uneventful until Nelson Piquet’s crash which brought the Safety Car (SC) out, and closing the pits to refueling. The rules stipulate that when the pits are closed cars may not be refueled. If they are refueled, the driver will be assessed a 10 second stop-and-go penalty, which means he will have to come back to the pits and then remain stationary for 10 seconds. In effect, the penalty is more like 25 seconds when accounting for pit entrance/exit time (depending on the track and pitlane layout).

The intent of the rule is to prevent a mass dash for the pits when there is a SC period. But the effect is that it ruins race strategies and artificially shuffles the order of the field. Furthermore, when the SC period occurs during a fuel window (lap 17-ish today) then some drivers are about to run out of fuel, so they have to pit and incur the penalty. Then they have to pit again to serve the penalty, and if this happens to multiple drivers as it did today, has it really cut down the pitlane traffic that much?

This rule does not work well and should be eliminated or changed.

Felipe Massa’s electronic “lollipop” gave him the green light before the fuel hose was removed causing him to leave and rip the hose off the machine. Good thing for the back up hose as Kimi Raikkonen was stacked behind him in the pits and could not have otherwise been refueled. Massa had to stop at the end of the pitlane, losing a lot of time before his crew could come and remove the hose. That effectively ended his race.

To make matters worse, as we’ve seen before, his speed is fragile. By that I mean he is very fast, as evidenced in the first part of the race when he led with a sizeable gap. But once things don’t go well he begins to compound his mistakes and loses pace. Here we saw him start missing chicanes, struggling to pass backmarkers (admittedly this track is not easy to pass on) and then he spun and hit the water barrier.

Adding to the team’s disappointment, Raikkonen launched over a chicane and crashed into the wall so neither car scored any points. McLaren took over the constructor championship lead with Lewis Hamilton’s 3rd place finish.

The way the Ferrari team is performing is not the way of a championship winning team. I will be very surprised if they take the driver’s title this year, though they have a better shot at the constructor’s title.

Renault, on the other hand, have no hope of either title but they showed everyone today how it’s supposed to be done with Fernando Alonso winning from 15th position due to a little bit of luck, good strategy, and a car that seems to be well-suited to this track.

The venue is absolutely fantastic. It looks like something straight out of a movie or video game. The track needs a few revisions to make the racing better such as lower curbing, wider chicanes, shorter configuration, better pit entrance, and smoother pavement in a few spots. Also the marshals in Singapore need better training. One was knocked down by the front wheel while frantically rolling away Rubens Barrichello’s Honda. But overall F1 nailed it. This is a great preview of things to come.

F1: Singapore Qualifying

Neat new circuit. I like the “kart barrier system” of linked barriers that are often found at kart tracks. Unfortunately Giancarlo Fisichella did not get a hot lap as he experienced impact with said barriers pretty much as soon as he left the pits.

This track looks really neat but is a little too slow with an average speed around 110 mph. Because it’s so narrow, there probably won’t be much passing unless it rains.

It looks like the main issues for tomorrow’s race will be weather which will dictate tire choices, as well as visibility due to it also being a night race, brake temperatures (lots of corners), tight chicanes, and the pit entrance which requires cars entering to essentially stay on the racing line and block the cars behind, which will be running at high speed.

But the biggest question to me is the turn 10 chicanes. It looks to me that because it is so narrow there, as well as there being so much run off room (relatively) we’re going to see people going off there while attempting to race side-by-side. That would just lay the ground work for more Spa Francorchamps-like penalties. Let’s hope not.

Lewis Hamilton was lucky to make it into Q1 as he was 10th in Q2 because he waited too long to go out, overdrove by locking his tires frequently, and then ran into some traffic. The harder compound tires don’t seem to suit the McLarens as well as the Ferraris under those conditions. Also, Kimi Raikkonen seems to have a narrow operating window with his setups – maybe the front tires aren’t gripping quickly enough.

Felipe Massa is on pole by 0.6 s, Hamilton second, and followed by Raikkonen. Let’s hope for an exciting race tomorrow with lots of overtaking. No idea what fuel strategy anyone is running.

Monaco Grand Prix

Heikki Kovalainen has to have some of the worst luck in F1 this year. It didn’t improve today when he either stalled on the grid or the engine failed to fire before the start of the formation lap, so he had to start from the pitlane (and dead last).

The race started off wet and Lewis Hamilton got a great start passing Kimi Raikkonen for second. Nico Rosberg damaged his front wing and drove a couple of laps with it dangling until pitting on lap 3.

Not long after Hamilton clipped the wall with his right rear and had to come in for a change. Then Fernando Alonso has an incident as well.

Raikkonen was then given a drive through penalty for not having his tires fitted within 3 minutes off when the cars rolled off for their formation lap. Granted the rules are the rules, but F1 issues a lot of penalties for the car and driver for non-track events, which is just plain stupid. As long as the car is ready for the start it should not matter. The FIA again ruined a good race with this one.

Also, the rule that does not allow refueling during a safety car period is ridiculous because it prevents everyone from refueling the entire time the safety car is on track, when all it is meant to do is prevent everyone from coming in simultaneously.

What the rule should do is simply limit the number of cars that can enter the pits during a safety period, and the cars in the pits can then have whatever service needed. If a car is damaged and the pit limit has been reached, the car should be allowed in but only then should refueling not be allowed.

Anyway, David Coulthard crashed into the armco coming up to the casino, and then he’s tagged by Sebastian Bourdais who spun as well. It looked like a slick spot caught both of them off guard.

Then Alonso tries a boneheaded move on the inside of Nick Heidfeld at the hairpin. Didn’t work, broke his wing. Kovalainen got a nudge from a Williams in the ensuing traffic jam though nothing seems to have been damaged.

Robert Kubica leads briefly after Felipe Massa misses the apex for St. Devote, and Adrian Sutil runs as high as 4th. Raikkonen has a moment or two.

Timo Glock had an interesting spin captured with his onboard camera looking back.

Alonso was the first to change to dry tires even as rain was predicted to arrive in 6 minutes. The rain never came and everyone else followed suit.

Nelson Piquet and Nico Rosberg were having a heck of a battle with Piquet doing his best to hold off Rosberg while on full rain tires to everyone else’s intermediate tires. Alonso started setting fast laps on slicks, Piquet not so much as he crashed out.

Rosberg later had a big crash leaving debris all over the road and bringing out the safety car. First to arrive were Heidfeld and, I believe, Kovalainen. Heidfeld punctured a tire.

Hamilton lost his 40 second cushion as the field closed up behind the safety car.

Adrian Sutil did the drive of the race but was robbed of a near certain points finish when Raikkonen lost control and had a huge tank slapper exiting the tunnel and running into Sutil’s right rear. Life just isn’t fair some times.

Well done Hamilton and Kubica. Rubens Barrichello and Kazaki Nakajima did very well, and Sebastian Vettel did a superb job in bringing his Toro Rosso from 18th to finish 5th. What a race.

By the way, the GP2 race broadcast prior to the F1 race was quite interesting to watch. The cars are a bit slower but considering it costs maybe an average of 50 to 100 times as much to run an F1 car, that’s a good value that F1 might want to follow more closely.

Monaco Grand Prix Qualifying

Always fascinating to watch Monaco.

It’s hard to draw conclusions from looking at the final times. This is because they are set in different sessions depending on a driver’s final qualifying position. We’re not comparing times from the same event.

On the surface the final times show that Fernando Alonso out-qualified his teammate by a mere 0.081 seconds. But the true gap is whatever Alonso’s time from Q1 was compared to Nelson Piquet’s final time, which was set in Q1 since he did not advance beyond that. Everyone remaining had a different fuel load in Q3 than they did in Q1 (and the track conditions also likely changed), so the times are not comparable. It’s not as close as it looks.

In other words, the final qualifying results do not accurately show the performance of the drivers. The first session is better for that.

The best driver in today’s event was Nico Rosberg, 0.8 seconds off the pole time but only trailing the Ferraris, McLarens, and one BMW which are currently the cars to beat.

Felipe Massa is possibly the strongest qualifier in F1 over the last two seasons, though he’s hot and cold. Kimi Raikkonen is more consistent in race performance. Ferrari’s line up is superb.

Lewis Hamilton might’ve been on pole considering his speed in the first sector but he struggled a little in the other two sectors. There’s something about the way he drives that is fast yet different from most of the others. Supposedly he is much harder on the front tires. Not sure how this will affect his race tomorrow, but I’m guessing he’ll have to make more than one pitstop, though that’s probably the faster strategy any way. McLaren’s drivers are quite strong but it’s too early to tell as they’re both only in their second year of F1.

David Coulthard had a big crash coming out of the tunnel though it looked like it may not have been driver error. Luckily he had more run off room there than anywhere else. The Red Bull doesn’t hang on to its wheels very well after impact.

Nick Heidfeld and Piquet were way off the pace, outqualified by their teammates by 8 and 10 positions, respectively. It seems Nick Heidfeld has all the speed needed but lacked motivation. Then when Robert Kubica joined the team it lit a fire under him but now he’s starting to accept that Kubica is faster and hasn’t done well lately. As for Piquet, he’s just not ready for F1. Renault should try to sign Vitantonio Luizzi for the rest of the year and put him in the car immediately.

The fact that positions 5 through 9 on the grid are occupied by different teams means that F1 is extremely competitive and the driver makes a big difference now that driver-aids have been eliminated, especially at Monaco. It will be a surprise to get through tomorrow’s race without a safety car period.